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Sunday, August 21, 2011

Rant: perfumed lawn fertilizer?

I try my best to keep this blog upbeat and positive, but today I’ve got to rant a little.

This morning I proceeded to apply weed-and-feed to the lawn in our front yard because it’s infested with oxalis, dandelion, and crabcrass. We hadn’t fertilized in years because we have a mulching lawnmower and try to use as few lawn-care chemicals as possible. But the weed problem had begun to turn nasty as you can see in the photos below.

The other week we bought a bag of Scotts Turf Builder With PLUS 2 Weed Control from our local Costco because it promised to solve the problems we’re having. What I didn’t pay attention to was the innocuous phrase “Green Meadow scent” printed in the upper left corner of the bag.

Scented weed-and-feed? Really?

Really!

I gagged when I opened the bag. Words fail to capture the extent of this assault on my olfactory system. If this is what “green meadows” smell like, I never want to smell one again. The comparison that came to mind was being trapped inside a clothes dryer with nothing but a jumbo-sized box of the most obnoxiously scented dryer sheets to keep you company.

OK, I do understand that people like freshly laundered clothes that smell of April rain, or tropical flowers, or the “outdoors” (hey, hang your laundry on a clothesline outside, and you’ve got that “outdoors” smell—for free!). But do people really need their lawn to smell like something else—specifically a “green meadow?”

I just don’t get it.

It’s been three hours now since I perfumed my lawn. And it still reeks to high heaven.

I think I’ll spread some manure along the perimeter of the lawn. At least that’s a smell I can deal with.